About two weeks ago, my four year old got injured while playing outside. He got hit with a stick to the face. It cut the bridge of his nose and beneath his left eyebrow. When two hours passed and he still had difficulty opening his eye, I called the ophthalmologist (we will call him Doctor X) and booked an emergency appointment half an hour later. Since it’d be harder on my mom to take me (I’m blind) and my son together, I stayed home with the other kids while she took my four year old to see Doctor X.
It turned out that the cornea was scratched and Doctor X applied an ointment, covered the eye with a patch and prescribed an eye drop.
Two days later and my son’s eye was irritated and red and he complained that it hurt. So back to the clinic. Again I stayed home while my mother took my son in. This time Doctor X said there was a splinter stuck to the cornea and that my son would need to undergo a light surgery-like procedure.
So The procedure?
- My son would need to fast six hours,
- he’d be sedated,
- and the doctor would extricate the splinter.
Now, I’m no novice to eye treatment, I’ve had all kinds of procedures, laser treatment and surgeries. So while Doctor X is explaining to my mother what would happen, my mother called me and let me talk to him. I asked Doctor X if he was going to pluck the splinter out with tweezers, cover it up for a few hours or a day and treat the injury with eye drops. He said no, there will be a small incision and stitches afterwards.
I thought that was weird, but novice or no, I’m still no expert. But I remembered that a few years ago I had some stitches come loose – leftovers from an eye surgery – and it felt like I had something poking my eye. My ophthalmologist at the time, a Dutch professor who had been working here for a few years, told me she’d need to cut the loose thread and pluck it out. She used an anesthetic eyedrop before she cut and plugged the loose thread out. All I felt was a small pinch and it was over in less than fifteen seconds.
Now, I understand a four year old would never stay put for that long while the doctor plucked out a splinter from his cornea, so I get the part where he’d need to be sedated. But the anesthesiologist was only available after 3pm and my son had to be fasting for six hours. No drink, no food. Did you hear the part where I said he’s a four year old? And I was by no means agreeing to the incision part.
So I did the next thing I could: I told my mom to go to another ophthalmologist – we will call him Doctor Y.
Doctor Y, who’s the owner of his clinic, examined my son’s eye, confirmed that the cornea was scratched, but said there was no splinter.
What?
My mom told him, of course, to check again. So he did. When my mom insisted that he be thorough, He took photos. Then he cleaned the eye with some special pad and Doctor Y informed my mom that there had been a small hair in the eye, but that he’d taken it out when he cleaned it.
Doctor Y changed the eye drop – my son said the previous one burned – shook his head in lament at Doctor X, and marked an appointment for two days later.
Two days later, Doctor Y said the eye was better and that instead of using the eye drop he prescribed (which burned as well) every two hours, to start using it every four hours, and marked another appointment for the following week.
On the following week, Doctor Y says that most of the scratch has healed, except for one small point. And that in this small point, an eyelash was stuck and that if only my son stayed still for one minute, he could pluck it out.
Of course, when a four year old sees tweezers that look a lot like a long needle approaching his eye, his instinct is to scream and fight.
So, because the eyelash had to go so the eye could heal without causing any inflammation, Doctor Y who had scoffed at Doctor X for suggesting a surgery-like procedure to remove the ‘splinter’, now informed my mother that it would be better to sedate my son so that the hair could be removed.
What did Doctor Y tell my mother would happen in this procedure?
- My son would need to fast for six hours
- My son would be lightly sedated
- Doctor Y would pluck out the small hair stuck to the cornea – no incision or stitches needed.
Now, Doctor Y promised that this hair hadn’t been there before and seemed genuinely sorry for the procedure my son would need to endure.
Only, the appointment was set for 4 in the afternoon. When it was pointed out my son was only four and that it’s hard to make a four year old fast, the doctor said, give him a good breakfast before ten in the morning and let him drink small sips of water until two in the afternoon. My mother asked to be present during the procedure, but Doctor Y said she wasn’t allowed in the OR.
So this time around, I decided I was going with my mother and my son. At five, not four, the nurse called my son’s name and in we went. The doctor who was going to do the procedure was not Doctor Y, but Doctor Z, a resident ophthalmologist in a nearby hospital, but who came to Doctor Y’s clinic every Thursdays for scheduled surgeries.
Doctor Z saw my panicked, screaming son holding me in a chokehold, realized I was blind, and allowed me to be present during the procedure.
They helped me into the OR, and let me hold my son while they gave him a light sedative intravenous. The plan was to pluck out the ‘hair’ while my son was relaxed, but the moment Doctor Z placed my son on the bed and stood over him, my son started screaming again – no matter that he was half sedated. So the anesthesiologist added more sedative and soon my son was asleep. I sat beside my baby, massaging his leg while Doctor Z looked into my sons’ eye.
He asked, “he was hit with wood?”
I said yes. A stick.
And Doctor Z said there were two splinters in my son’s cornea, one longer than the other.
I didn’t say anything, but inwardly, I wondered if Doctor Y was in the OR with us and if he had heard what Doctor Z had said.
While we waited for my son to wake in the next room, I told my mom that Doctor Z said it was no hair, but that it was a splinter and that Doctor X had been right. Either Doctor Y had lied about there not being anything in the two times he examined my son, or he hadn’t seen it. But then, it’s hard to believe he hadn’t seen the splinter, given he had taken photos of the eye when my mom asked him to make sure.
Was Doctor X a better choice then? I don’t think so. Doctor X explained the exorbitant cost to the procedure by explaining the need of an incision and stitches, while Doctor Z needed no incision or stitches and he did pluck the splinters with long medical tweezers and sent my baby home.
Doctor Y, on the other hand, is the owner of the clinic and may have lied so that I would do the procedure in his clinic.
The thing is – and it’s an irony – the cost of the procedure in Doctor Y’s clinic was ¼ of the price that Doctor X asked for, and if Doctor Y had told me on day one that there was a splinter indeed, I’d have done the procedure in his clinic anyway.
So I ask again, malpractice or business competition?
Jina S. Bazzar 